Yogi Stephanie Snyder coming to Kirkwood's Freeride Flow Festival

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A most efficient way to stretch out the March 16-18 Freeride Flow Festival at Kirkwood Mountain Resort is with yoga.

Three of San Francisco's most popular yogis will head classes during the backcountry ski-music and yoga event, including Stephanie Snyder.

"It will be a fun flow but it will also be therapeutic for them and help prepare them or unwind them from where ever they are coming or going," Snyder said. "It will be special for the snow crowd. Vinyasa flow is particularly athletic."

Freeride Flow Festival will join winter athletes of all abilities with professional sports athletes, backcountry experts and top industry vendors for clinics, demonstrations, electronic DJs, performances and a whole lot of apres ski. Tickets are on sale now at FreerideFlowFest.com.

Snyder will instruct two classes on Friday, March 16, one focusing on hips, the other upper body, heart and shoulders. She typically has about 130 attend here weekly classes in the yoga hotbed of San Francisco. Pradeep Teotia and Pete Guinosso also will conduct classes.

"Yoga is a huge business right now, and just getting bigger and bigger," she said. "In the Bay Area, it's part of the culture but also growing in middle America because it's lost its stigma. It's not so much a new-agey, fluffy kind of thing.

"In an hour or hour and half they get every thing they need. A good workout. They get therapeutic results for their body as well. They get stress relief. It helps regulate your metabolism, your hormones, your brain chemistry, so you get a lot of things taken care of with one stop. That's become more important these days. It's not just about omming and chanting, although we do that a lot in my class."

Snyder, 40, began learning yoga when she was in her early 20s.

"Before I learned yoga I was a basket case," she said. "I was high-strung and anxious. Yoga helped me in every aspect of my life."

"We will be stengthening and lengthening the quads and the hip flexor, shoulders, unwinding the low back just set them up for having a good time over the weekend, especially because I am teaching them all on Friday," Snyder said. "I won't work them too hard but still make it a fun class."